Beyond LIS and LIMS: coordinated orders and results management

In a Lab Pinnacles series, industry experts joined together to discuss the value of laboratory order and results management solutions in the United States, United Kingdom and European Union.

Moderator (Mod): COVID-19 cast a spotlight on the need for scalable laboratory technology that supports rapid adoption of new tests and instruments, as well as rapid order sharing and routing with other laboratories. In Europe, how important is agile, scalable technology in the response to COVID-19 or any event that causes spikes in laboratory testing?

Pieter De Smet (PDS): Scalability is essential for laboratories today, as the COVID-19 crisis made even more clear. At the start of the pandemic, there was not enough capacity to manage the surge in tests and orders. Laboratories in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, for example, needed to move very quickly from pre-pandemic low daily volumes to multiple thousands per day.¹ In Austria, one Viennese laboratory jumped in record time to around 150,000 tests per day and – as Thierry will attest – a national screening initiative in France is doing much more than that. The governments of those countries needed help scaling up order entry, result distribution, and management of laboratory workflows, which meant they needed not only the right technology but also the right expertise.